I like reading about crazy people, so I enjoyed the recent New Yorker profile of movie director James Cameron.
The occasion for the profile is the upcoming release of his new science-fiction movie, Avatar. I’d heard about this movie, the plot of which revolves around human efforts to subjugate an alien race on some distant planet, and figured it would be the kind of cheesy CGI mess that sci-fi movies cursed with unlimited money usually turn into these days.
Then I came to this part of the New Yorker profile:
“The digital elements of “Avatar,” [Cameron] claims, are so believable that, even when they exist alongside human actors, the audience will lose track of what is real and what is not. “This film integrates my life’s achievements,” he told me. “It’s the most complicated stuff anyone’s ever done.”
Intrigued, I clicked over to the trailer and saw… the kind of cheesy CGI mess that sci-fi movies cursed with unlimited money usually turn into these days.
What is it that happens to movie directors that causes them to be so impressed by this stuff? If I were the studio head that gave this guy $230 million to make this film, I’d have a very sinking feeling right about now.
Thank God he made Aliens before digital animation got “advanced” enough to rely heavily on.